Neoliberal Narratives: Pedro Castillo and the Peruvian Constitution’s Impeachment Trap
Image courtesy of Willian Justen de Vasconcellos via Unsplash
Most mainstream media outlets hailed the impeachment of the former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo in December 2022 as a democratic triumph over the power grab of a would-be autocrat. However, how does one reconcile this narrative with the wide scale protests against the impeachment and successor administration, which have engulfed the country in the months since? Or the repudiation of the decision by many other Latin American governments? The answer lies within the intentional ambiguity of a constitutional clause, Peru’s deeply entrenched inequities, and the country's uncertain future.
In Peru, the institution of impeachment, as it presently exists, has become perverted. In the mere thirty years since the ratification of the new 1993 Peruvian constitution, which implemented new impeachment protocols and processes, the Congress of the Republic of Peru has made no less than eight impeachment attempts against five acting presidents, successfully ousting four.
Impeachment, in theory, and sometimes in practice, is one of the most valuable tools under any constitutional arrangement for the preservation of democratic governance. Acting as a last line of defense, the legislature has to check the tyrannical potential of the executive office. Impeachment’s power to eject a democratically elected leader makes it inherently susceptible to subverting the will of the people. The “impeachment trap” built into the Peruvian constitution has done just that, being the decisive factor in Peru cycling through seven different presidents in the past seven years and becoming mired in deep political instability and civil unrest from which there is no prospect of it soon emerging.
To understand how and why the Peruvian congress has weaponized the institution of impeachment, it is necessary to understand the origination and legal technicalities of the Peruvian Constitution. Peru’s present constitution was implemented by the deposed dictator Alberto Fujimori, who ruled the country from his election in 1990 to his impeachment in 2000. Immediately after being elected, Fujimori began imposing austerity policies. This fueled private sector growth after over a decade of stagnation but only exacerbated inequality and devastated most of Peru’s majority poor and rural population. In 1992 after becoming impatient with Congress's resistance to his neoliberal economic agenda, with support for the military, Fujimori declared a state of emergency, dissolved Congress, and held elections for a new Congress in which his supporters won the majority of the seats before finally calling for the drafting of a new constitution by said congress.
The new constitution was ratified the next year and drastically altered Peru’s political and economic landscape, placing much greater restrictions on the role of the state in the economy and its ability to protect citizens from the caprice of private interests, turning Peru into what analysts have identified as the most neoliberal country in Latin America. Additionally, it restructured the legislature from being bicameral to unicameral while superficially weakening Congress and expanding the powers of the president
Somewhat strangely, when juxtaposed against the strengthening of executive power otherwise, another pertinent detail of the 1993 Peruvian Constitution is Article 113, which allows for the President of Peru to be impeached should Congress declare their “physical and moral incapacity.” No further specifications for what constitutes “moral incapacity” are provided, effectively giving Congress free rein to impeach the president on any basis as long as they muster a two-thirds vote of approval. This provision, used to impeach Fujimori himself only seven years later, paradoxically cemented the legacy of his neoliberal shock therapy economics and authoritarian ruling style. So long as Article 113 remains in place, the powerful executive created by the 1993 Constitution is effectively a hammer to be wielded by Congress and ensures any president with intentions of deviating from the neoliberal status quo is kept in line.
To understand the Congress of Peru’s political agenda and how Article 113 has been weaponized to ensure its perpetuation, one must know that, like the land itself, with snow-capped mountain peaks and lush rainforest valleys, Peru is a country of great contrasts. 45 percent of Peruvians are of Indigenous descent, most of whom are poor, rural farmers living in the Andean highlands that dominate the majority of the country's territory. Most non-Indigenous Peruvians are concentrated in urban areas along the pacific coast, especially the capital city of Lima and its surrounding region that house nearly a third of the country's entire population, nearly 90 percent either being of partial or full European ancestry and only 2 percent being Indigenous. Lima has been Peru's political, economic, and cultural capital for nearly five centuries since being founded by conquistadors in 1535. During that entire half millennium, the elite of Lima has conducted a practice commonly called “centralismo”. Under “centralismo” the rest of Peru is treated as Lima’s colony—its wealth siphoned out and funneled into the capital whilst otherwise neglected. Naturally, this results in Lima becoming much wealthier and more developed than the rest of the country, instilling classist and racist sentiments among white Limeños toward their poor, rural, and Indigenous compatriots.
The neoliberal model introduced by Fujimori and institutionalized by his 1993 constitution may be seen merely as a way to continue “centralismo” into the twenty-first century. Peru’s economy since the Fujimori era has been described as a “miracle” by some scholars due to outpacing most other Latin American countries. However, the majority of this growth has been concentrated in Peru’s urban areas, with rural Peruvians remaining some of the poorest people in the western hemisphere. The Congress of the Republic, which had an approval rating prior to the impeachment of 11 percent and, when polled, 88 percent of the country say they believe is corrupt (the lowest and highest figures in Latin America, respectively), is dominated by wealthy right-wing oligarchs of the Popular Force party. Currently led by Alberto Fujimori’s daughter Keiko, the Popular Force party represents those who benefit the most from this unequal arrangement of the Peruvian economy. Article 113 is the ace up Congress’s sleeve, allowing them to dispose of any leader who threatens their ability to continue conducting business as usual.
With this context in mind, the rationale behind Congress’s most recent employment of Article 113 against Pedro Castillo and the reason for the following civil unrest become clear. Castillo was a political outsider and the first person from a poor, rural, and Indigenous background to be elected president, drawing most of his support from those demographics. Castillo campaigned on the slogan “No more poor people in a rich country,” promised to take Peru down the path away from neoliberalism that much of Latin America follows, and called for a constitutional referendum. From the moment Castillo announced his campaign, the Peruvian media and political establishment depicted him as an existential threat and characterized him using racist and classist stereotypes. Even so, by giving voice to a long-silenced majority and harnessing the power of grassroots organization, Castill managed to secure a narrow victory with a lead of just 44 thousand votes and began his term in July 2021.
Following the election, his opponent Keiko Fujimori immediately made a baseless accusation of election fraud and led her Popular Front party in obstructing every item on Castillo’s agenda before initiating the first impeachment attempt only four months into his term. After that impeachment attempt failed, another was launched four months later, falling again. Meanwhile, the right-wing congressional majority continued its resolute obstructionism, preventing Castillo from effectively governing or fulfilling his campaign promises and causing his approval rating to plummet. In December of 2022, only hours away from a third impeachment vote, which was likely to succeed, forced into a corner, Castillo attempted to temporarily dissolve congress, which is legal per Article 134 of the 1993 Constitution. This final act of desperation to try and escape the impeachment trap was seized upon by his opposition and the American news media as a pretense to depict Castillo’s determination to dismantle democracy and establish himself as a dictator, which in reality would have been utterly impossible as the police, military, and entire Peruvian political establishment were completely opposed to him.
The protests which have engulfed Peru in the aftermath of Castillo’s impeachment have been concentrated in Peru’s poorest, most rural, and most heavily Indigenous areas, led by those people that Castillo tried to fight against the plight of, and whose liberation movement has now been smeared internationally as inept and authoritarian. These protesters' most vocal demand has been for snap elections to oust Castillo’s unelected successor and the drafting of a new constitution. Congress may have finally overplayed its hand and laid bare the true motive behind Article 113 for all to see. In response to the unrest, dozens have been killed and hundreds injured at the hands of the Peruvian military and police as tensions show no signs of cooling; whether or not the Peruvian people’s demands will be met remains to be seen; however, for one hope Pedro Castillo will be the last man of the people caught in the Peruvian congress’s impeachment trap.
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